Divine Sacrifice, The

by Hays, Anthony

  I shook my head to clear away the last remnants of sleep. From the taste of the breeze and the look of the sky, I took it to be an hour, perhaps two, before daybreak. “Did they lose their way?”

  Bedevere dragged himself over to a wall and leaned back. I could not fathom the look on his face. It was one not of sadness, but almost of resignation. “They are dead.”

  “What!” I struggled to my feet. “Where? How?”

  “Be silent, Malgwyn! That is why I came for you; we do not wish the entire village to know.”

  I paid heed to his warning and sat back down. “Tell me.”

  “Illtud’s patrol discovered two riderless horses with Arthur’s mark on them. They backtracked the horses to a place at the end of an old trail two hours to the south of here, near a stream. Illtud found our men’s bodies hidden under some brush.

  “Arthur sent me for you. He must stay here to keep this thing silent, but he must know who has done this. That is your task. If it involves this old monachus, that is one thing, but if it does not, that calls forth yet a stranger answer and one that may have grave consequences.”

  “Is the place protected?”

  “Illtud himself commands the watchmen.”

  “Bring forth Merlin, but do not wake Coroticus or Patrick.”

  “As you wish.” Anyone but Bedevere would ask why I sent for an old man such as Merlin, but no one knew the forest like Merlin did. No one could read the signs left by man or animal as clearly as my old friend. He had spent too many years as a child, surviving in the forest. “I have a horse prepared for you.” He reached down and picked up my tunic, his nose wrinkling. “Malgwyn, have you started wearing women’s scented water?”

  “I am not at liberty to say, master of the horse. If you ask again, I have the Rigotamos’s permission to remove your head.”

  Bedevere smiled. “I doubt that, but each of us has a right to his little secrets.”

  “We’ve wasted enough time.”

  “That we have, Master Malgwyn. Let’s away.”

  Once we arrived, it took me less than an hour to discover who had murdered Arthur’s men. And most of that time was spent in riding to the secluded glen where Illtud and his men guarded the bodies of their comrades. The site lay just off a well-traveled road, across the bridge over the River Brue, and between Ynys-witrin and Lindinis, once a prosperous Roman town. The path was worn deeply, ending near a stream where four large fires had been built. The grass had been worn away all around the stream.

  I could tell at a glance that tin ore was being panned from the stream, and from the look of the big fires, it was being smelted as well. A rickety shed stood to one side and a heavy wooden table was before it. I looked first at it and saw broken bits of metal, familiar bits of metal, decorating the top.

  “Malgwyn! Here!” Illtud directed me behind the shed. There were three soldiers in a bloody pile.

  I shook my head. Regretfully, I was more used to this kind of death than that of Eleonore’s or Elafius’s. Carefully studying their relative positions, I got three of Illtud’s men to help separate the bodies so I could better view their wounds.

  They had dismounted before meeting their murderers. Only one had been struck from the front. The other two had taken broadsword strokes across their backs from two right-handed attackers. A look of shock was frozen on the face of the man who had seen his assailants. I was saddened by the mustachioed face of the dead man. I did not know his name, but he had been helpful and respectful in times past.

  Leaning down, I hefted the arms and legs. The stiffening had come and gone, so these men had been killed not long after they had started their search. Something in the severity of the wounds told me that their attackers had been both surprised and frightened by Arthur’s men. Frightened, yet very decisive about what course of action to take.

  Men who are uncertain often make lighter cuts first as if they were pulling the blows. Not in this case. They had followed through almost viciously. When I learned their identities, I felt that I would understand their urgency. I ordered the bodies covered and went back to the shed. I was becoming convinced that Lauhiir’s tin-smelting operation was at the heart of Elafius’s death and the death of these three men.

  “They dismounted here, Malgwyn.” I heard a crackly but familiar voice across the clearing. Merlin had arrived.

  “How do you know? There are enough horses here to mount a campaign against Horsa and Hengist.”

  “I had them keep their horses to the perimeter, Malgwyn,” Bedevere assured me. “I remembered how you discovered where Eleonore was murdered.”

  “Sorry, Bedevere. My humors are out of sorts.”

  “And whose would not be, Malgwyn? All of this mystery. Murder,” Merlin muttered. “It misted last night and the ground was already damp. No mud, but the ground was soft.”

  I saw what he did. Hoofprints, the front ones cutting in deeper when the horses came almost uniformly to a halt, lined up at the edge of the clearing. The soldiers’ caligae with their Roman-style hobnails had left their distinctive marks. Other boot prints were present but their soles held no hobnails.

  Following the steps, I could see the soldiers cross the clearing, stopping at the table. Something happened there. The feet without nails had, one pair anyway, spun around and begun to run toward the rear of the shed. I followed, and at the back edge, just in the shadows, was a pool of blood, black and hardening. Two of the soldiers were killed here.

  The third, following closely behind them, turned and headed back to the horses. He may have gotten his sword out, for I saw two more great sprays of blood, misting the ground as an arrow pointing to one spot. This would seem to match the soldier struck between the shoulders from behind. His attacker did not wait until he turned about.

  In the sandy soil, I could see where he had lain, and I discerned two separate sets of boots on either side. They dragged him back to where he lay now, behind the shed piled upon the others.

  “Whoever they were,” I said in a half-whisper, “our men knew them or knew of them.”

  “Why say you that?” Bedevere’s voice, half in my ear, scared me.

  “They dismounted, Bedevere. Their footprints show that they followed someone to the rear of the building, no sign of running. Only then was there any clue of a struggle. They followed someone that they had no reason to distrust and died for their misjudgment.”

  “How? How do you do this, Malgwyn?” Illtud asked, shaking his woolly head in disbelief.

  I found a stump and sat down. “It is only a question of looking beyond the dead to see how they got there. There is no magic to it. Much of it is just common sense.”

  “I can add something to the mix, Malgwyn,” Merlin said, holding a piece of thick cloth in his hand. “I found it in the crook of a branch. It must have torn off in their haste to escape.”

  Bedevere rushed up and snatched it from the old man. “Malgwyn! This is . . .”

  I rose. “Yes, it’s a piece of a tunic from one of Lauhiir’s men.” Lauhiir arrayed his men in stunning white tunics with a green cross. This fragment showed a part of one of the cross’s points.

  Holding the cloth in my one hand, I stood and surveyed the area before me, the tin mining, the smelting, the large worktable. I went into the shed with Merlin and Bedevere on my heels. In one corner, clearly marked in the dirt, were the outlines of six oblong boxes. Their edges had cut deeply into the dirt, as if other, equally heavy boxes had been laid atop.

  “Malgwyn, though I am not your equal in sorting these things out, I believe I can help with this,” offered Merlin.

  “Please.”

  “You have tin mining and smelting, fragments of both tin and silver and bronze, and a place where big, heavy crates were stacked,” he began.

  “And,” I said, picking up his line of thought, “you have men willing to kill to cover up their activities. And this.” I pulled the silver denarius that I had found in Elafius’s cell from my pouch. Reaching down and taking a ragged
piece of rock from the ground, I scraped the coin’s surface. Its bright silver proved only a thin skin, beneath which lay a dull gray.

  “They have been forging coins!” Bedevere proclaimed. “Lauhiir has been forging coins.”

  “That makes many things clear,” I said. From the day of his appointment to command the Tor, I had thought that it was like putting the thief in charge of the treasure room. But his family was prominent and had supported Ambrosius strongly. Our land was so fragmented, so split by families and factions, that such loyalties could not be forgotten. Politics weighed heavily in every decision the Rigotamos made, even when common sense argued against it.

  “So, this is the source of that prosperity that bothers Arthur so much,” Bedevere said into the silence.

  “It must be so,” I said. Suddenly it all became clear. Lauhiir had been purchasing his luxuries with his forged coins. The coins circulated in the village and eventually a goodly number found their way into the church’s hands, hence Coroticus’s ability to so lavishly provide for his table. It was a false prosperity and Arthur had been right to worry. No doubt, Lauhiir explained his sudden wealth of coins as profit from the sale of tin. Tin was valuable, but not as valuable as silver, and that is what the receiver of the coins thought he was getting.

  This solved the question of Elafius’s murder. In helping Lauhiir’s efforts at tin mining and smelting, the old monachus must have discovered the forging. He would have felt honor bound to report it to Coroticus, and so Lauhiir had had the old man killed to keep him quiet.

  But now it had turned into something much more evil. For in this lame attempt to conceal a crime that could be forgiven, Lauhiir’s men had committed the unforgivable. They had killed three of the Rigotamos’s soldiers. The punishment for that was death. And while the actual doers of this deed must be punished, so must their commander, Lauhiir.

  I heard shouting and looked up. Bedevere was shouting orders to Illtud, to arrest Lauhiir, I knew. Other men he was dispatching to bring their dead comrades back to the abbey. My strength was all but gone, and I rose slowly from my seat.

  As soldiers mounted and rode around us in a bustle of activity, Merlin walked up next to me and hooked his wrinkled hand into the crook of my one good arm.

  “Malgwyn?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you see how deep were the marks those crates left?”

  “Aye.” I spoke softly.

  “They held far more coins than are needed for a bit of food and a few trinkets. And this would not have been his only or even his biggest hoard. That would be on the Tor. Something else is happening here. That many coins call for a larger purpose.”

  I nodded. He was right. And unless Lauhiir was quickly captured, sorting out that purpose might be beyond my abilities. Patrick. He would speak honestly and from experience about the ways of nobles. I trusted Arthur, but in this I needed an objective mind, someone who did not hold nobles in awe. Yes, Patrick. I would seek his counsel.

  But I never got the chance to put his counsel in play. For, not two hours later, when I arrived at the cell appointed to Patrick, no voice bade me enter, and when I pulled the roughhewn wooden door back, I was met not by the greetings or the grumblings of the aged episcopus, but by his very dead corpse sprawled on the floor.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I had noticed, over the years, that death diminished a man, stole his essence, left him small and pale. Not Patrick. Patrick looked as solemn and dignified in death as he had in life. And as fierce. Even in death, he retained his size and dignity; even as his life’s blood soaked the ground darkly, he was formidable.

  He lay on his stomach, his head turned toward the door, his eyes open. They stared at nothing, of course, but I sensed no reproach in them, only an acceptance. The old man had seen his death approaching and did not flinch in its face.

  I knelt on the hard-packed earthen floor, the buzz of the crowd outside the door hardly penetrating my confusion and my frustration. That his death was not connected to that of Elafius was simply too bizarre a notion to even countenance. But, back in the glen, it had seemed clear that Lauhiir was responsible for Elafius’s death. And I could see no reason for Lauhiir wanting or needing Patrick dead. But two childhood friends, both servants of the Christ, dead within two days of each other at the same place? How could they not be connected?

  I rose and turned back to the door; I sent runners, a few of the brothers, to fetch Bedevere and Ider from their errands. Others I sent for Patrick’s attendants.

  I should have foreseen this; my skin felt tight and my head seemed to burst with guilt. While I worried about goods bought and sold, about corrupt lords, something else, so much simpler, had been going on. Patrick, no matter my own feelings, believed strongly in the Christ. And not just in the divinity of the Christ, but in those beliefs accepted and espoused by the church in Rome. Yet he came to Ynys-witrin not so much to defend the church, but to apologize to an old friend for a horrible error in his youth, an error that was even now threatening his future.

  I twisted my head and looked past the dark forms crowding the door and to the hills surrounding. They seemed like a cage to me now, a cage in which had been trapped men, and women, who believed passionately in opposing theories, and I was trapped within a cage as well, a cage of arrogance. This puzzle seemed too much for my poor, addled brain. I had missed something, something I could not fathom, and now another man, a great man, was dead.

  “Malgwyn?”

  Arthur’s voice quietly called me. I didn’t turn, just continued staring at Patrick’s silent form.

  “Bring me a skin of wine, Arthur.”

  “No.”

  “I know you mean only good things, my lord. But this man’s death lies at my door. I was blind. I am finished. No more playing with people’s lives, pretending I am more than I am. Bring me wine and leave me alone.”

  I heard the rustle of his tunic and felt it brush me as he knelt beside me, and then his hand fell lightly on my shoulder. “No, Malgwyn. You could not have foreseen this death unless you were a wizard or a prophet. Guinevere and I were wrong the night before, wrong to lead your suspicions away from Rhiannon, wrong to try to divert your focus. It was not you who was wrong. I was wrong.”

  And that gave me pause more than anything else. For a lord, aye, the Rigotamos himself, to admit that he had been wrong about anything was rare. But Arthur was unlike any Rigotamos there had been, and, I was reasonably certain, unlike any that was yet to come.

  He grabbed my elbow and pulled me to my feet. “Outside,” he commanded with a jerk of his head, the brown hair flowing freely about his shoulders. I rose as he turned to the door and the crowd parted before him. Bedevere, expressionless as always, stood near the door. “Let no one enter,” I told him. He nodded. Ider, at his arm, wore a look of sheer confusion and abject depression. Poor Ider! His young life had left him ill equipped for so many shocks, so soon.

  Once away from the crowd, Arthur moved close. “This may not be about my crown, as Eleonore’s affair was, but it is at least as important,” he said in a low voice. “Think, old friend! Patrick carried influence greater than any other episcopus from our lands, greater than even Dubricius. If we do not resolve this matter, the church fathers in Rome will send others to do so.

  “Malgwyn, you know I love the Christ and that I worship Him. But you know too that Roman favor is often purchased with a purse, not devotion. One of the ways that I hold my power is to keep new sources of power from arising. If Patrick’s death is not resolved, and someone like Germanus is sent here, my enemies may take the opportunity to marry themselves to Rome and hence gain new power. Coroticus and I are not friends, but we know and understand each other. I do not wish to see him replaced. It could harm what peace we now have. Now, forget this talk of drink and bring your focus to bear on this new problem. For I tell you most honestly that I am confused beyond all understanding.”

  With that, I shook my head to clear it and gazed again at the green hill
s surrounding Ynys-witrin, a pall of morning mist draping around them. Off to my right, I could see the windswept summit of Wirral Hill, with its lone thorn tree pointing like a finger toward the heavens, planted by Joseph of Arimathea the brothers had taught me; at that moment, I felt as alone as that thorn tree and as weary as those pilgrims of long ago.

  Arthur was right. Focus. I had to focus. This was not the killing of the young boy, aye, within this very place. Nor was it the killing of Eleonore within the unruly, messy lanes of Arthur’s castle. No, whatever the source of these murders, it ranged from the distant Tor, through the village, and across the abbey and beyond.

  I breathed deeply of earth-tainted air and turned back to the hut where Patrick lay. The brothers and others who were gathered round quieted their gossiping and, as they had for Arthur, made way for me.

  “Bedevere, send two of your soldiers and Ider to scour the abbey and the village. Ask if anyone saw aught of Patrick last eve. I’ll find you when I have finished here.”

  With my shock behind me, I sent one brother for candles. While the flood of daylight exposed the area just inside the door, the corners of the room remained draped in darkness. Within moments, enough light splayed in dancing fingers from the circle of candles to see inside the shelter.

  Poor Patrick! Somehow I felt he was victim to his own beliefs, to his own faith. His had not been an easy life, nor a completely simple one. I knew without his telling me that Patrick’s youthful error had contributed greatly to his seeking a life of service to the Christ. I chuckled a morbid sort of chuckle. Were killing someone all it took to send a man down the path of God, I would have worn the cobblestones thin and brittle as cold bread, and I would undoubtedly be the most devout man in all of the world. Too many men had counted my face the last they saw.

  To the work at hand. I turned my attention away from the story that was Patrick’s life to the body that was Patrick’s house on earth. He had been stabbed from behind and allowed to fall to the floor.